Quick post while my files are uploading to the work server. Blog roll! It sounds edible but is mostly time consuming.

First and foremost is Anthropology.net. It doesn’t get updated too often but the articles are always well thought out and referenced. Hominids, evolution, hooray!

A long term favourite is Colleen Morgan’s Middle Savagery. Colleen Morgan is an intrepid and pragmatic archaeologist. I find her dedication to quality archaeology, quality blogging and her work shoes inspiring.

Thanks to Middle Savagery, I have spent several hours on My Cartoon Version of Reality. It is the world of archaeology perfectly captured in slightly surreal cartoons. Also thanks to Middle Savagery is The Baking Archaeologist who also spends a lot of time thinking (and baking!) food.

Then there are the blogs of my dear friends; Katiefoolery with her abandoned houses and photography adventures, Flippyfrog with her knitted masterpieces (seriously, check out her daleks) and Dr. T’s exploration of historical figures’ medical histories. Oh and Matthew Asprey’s writings and cultural dalliances.

A group of students and professors from Yale University have found a fungi in the Amazon rainforest that can degrade and utilize the common plastic polyurethane (PUR). As part of the university’s Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory educational program, designed to engage undergraduate students in discovery-based research, the group searched for plants and cultured the micro-organisms within their tissue.

Several active organisms were identified, including two distinct isolates of Pestalotiopsis microspora with the ability to efficiently degrade and utilize PUR as the sole carbon source when grown anaerobically, a unique observation among reported PUR biodegradation activities.

Polyurethane is a big part of our mounting waste problem and this is a new possible solution for managing it. The fungi can survive on polyurethane alone and is uniquely able to do so in an oxygen-free environment. The Yale University team has published its findings in the article ‘Biodegradation of Polyester Polyurethane by Endophytic…